


Devil's Serenade

by Gunshy Fiction (Defiler_Wyrm)



Series: Bedroom Hymns [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Codependency, Gen, Humor, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Music, Past Tense, References to Homophobia, Rivalry, Sam's POV, Unresolved Sexual Tension, mild crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 03:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defiler_Wyrm/pseuds/Gunshy%20Fiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer has a strange habit that’s piqued Sam’s curiosity, though it takes time and help to figure it out. A story told in snapshots that shine a light on fear, longing, and the ineffable strangeness Sam's life has become.</p><p>Excerpt:<br/><i>The archangels wheeled around each other with Sam as the hub, spinning one direction and then another: now Gabriel biting at Lucifer’s heels, now Lucifer snapping for Gabriel’s throat, changing on a dime or with strange, uneasy lulls between. If they didn’t kill each other and take him and half the planet out as collateral damage they’d surely drive Sam to do it himself. Never mind that the only times he felt he truly <i>could</i> were the moments trapped beneath or between them, when their Grace roared through him like a hurricane carried on their gusting breath, and his mind was a million miles off from such thoughts at such times.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil's Serenade

The first time came as a surprise even if Sam figured it for a fluke. He'd been cleaning his Taurus, a methodical task to help centre the whirlwind of his mind. Without really thinking about it he'd wound up humming a tune he'd loved with fierce bitterness back in his college days – loved, and seldom listened to for all it hurt to contemplate.

_So maybe you could walk with me a while,_   
_And maybe I could rest beneath your smile._   
_Everybody stumbles sometimes and needs a hand to hold,_   
_'Cause it's a long trip alone._

By the time that tune was climbing the charts he'd already done his time alone, already found someone whose smile was an oasis is the desert that freedom from his family had turned out to be. He wasn't thinking of her at the moment, though. His mind wasn't lingering as it so often had through the years on blonde hair and blue, blue eyes. He wasn't even truly conscious of the words his lips formed as he broke from a hum to quiet singing–

_And I don't wanna know where I'd be without you here_

–until another voice answered: " _'Cause I'm not really me without you here._ "

And Sam startled, cloth slipping in a wild streak down the disembodied barrel of a gun, only to heave a breath the next moment. He still wasn't used to his – no, oh God, he didn't know what to call it and he's terrified to even _glance_ down that road much less walk it – wasn't used to _him_ dropping in quiet as death whenever he damned well pleased. There was no telling how long Lucifer had been standing there against the wall, watching, or if indeed he'd ever truly left the last time he'd disappeared. The archangel answered Sam's goldfish gawk with the quirk of a blond eyebrow – but it softened into a smile the human couldn't help but return. Those days it seemed he hung on that smile like a lifeline. It was an oasis in the desert of his exile even if those blue, blue eyes betrayed nothing of Lucifer's thoughts.

Sam caught his own thoughts and swallowed them down before clearing his throat. " _You_ know Dierks Bentley?" he huffed, full of equal amounts amusement and incredulity now. "Isn't that a little too, uh. Contemporary for you?"

"I know it because you know it," was the only explanation forthcoming. Lucifer pushed off of the wall; the subject changes; and Sam thought no more on it for a long while.

 

.

Okay so "a long while" is a relative term. It's really more like a few days but that was long enough for the incident to have faded from the forefront of his mind. That would be why the second time took him off-guard as well. Some jackass had insisted on keeping the jukebox spewing hard rock right up to the end of Sam's (well, _Keith's_ ) shift and every riff and crow and drum outro left the thick taste of ash in his mouth. He could practically smell the Impala's leather seats. When some drunk or another slurred along with – who was that, Scott Weiland? – all he could think about was off-key singing and a green-eyed grin.

He wasn't proud to admit it threw him off his game pretty hard but he insisted on soldiering through even when Lindsey tried to get him to take the rest of the night off. It stung, sure, but he'd be damned if he was going to let something that wasn't even bleeding get the better of him.

To be fair, given the Devil Himself fell in step with Sam almost as soon as he was out the door for the night, he was pretty sure he was damned either way. Might as well go out with his dignity intact. Unfortunately Lindsey's powers of perception paled in comparison to those of the Fallen angel walking alongside him: half a glance was all it took to elicit an open, patient expression Sam had come to interpret as an invitation to talk. Lucifer was always willing to listen as if he were a partner or an actual guardian angel. Sam never could suss out whether the fact that no one in the world had more sympathy for him than freaking Satan made him want to laugh or cry.

He drew in a deep breath through his nose as if to launch into a rant, some sort of explanation or confession – _it's not even that I can't stand that noisy old crap, it's knowing I'd put up with it for days on end if I could only hear his voice again_ – but it died on his lips and he shook his head instead.

"That bad, huh," Lucifer offered mildly.

That breath came back out as a sigh as Sam nodded. "Yeah."

"You deserve better than this, Sam."

"Don't. Just– not tonight, okay?" he entreated, and the archangel pulled his lips into a taut line but pressed no further. They lapsed into silence as they walked.

It wasn't a full block before Lucifer slid an arm around his shoulders. Sam glanced at him sidelong, wetting his lips with his tongue; small-town Oklahoma wasn't exactly the safest place to go walk down the street at night looking like _more than friends_ with another dude. For a moment he thought to push the arm off. On the other hand, he reasoned, the "other dude" in this equation was less a man and more a sentient primordial nuclear storm with the ability to mould reality like Play-Doh stuffed into the skin of a man. If some rednecks wanted to come after them what were they _really_ going to accomplish?

So he let Lucifer have this one. He'd already begged off the nightly "We'd make a great team for ending the human race" spiel. Only fair that he compromise and let the archangel indulge his possessive streak a little, public or not.

That damned song was stuck in his head though, the last one, and before Sam knew it he was doing it again: singing under his breath. " _Can you see, without eyes? Can you speak, without lies?_ "

–And Lucifer snapped his head sharply to peer up at his true vessel with lips pursed and eyes narrowed in an expression that Sam almost missed entirely. It wasn't til near the stanza's end ( _I'm gonna burn, burn you alive now, out of the chains that bind you_ ) that he finally noticed he was being stared at.

"Staring" was perhaps too light a term. It more felt like he was being probed and pulled apart and undressed all at once. He had to admit, Lucifer had some of the most eloquent _looks_ of anyone he'd ever met. _I don't even really_ like _this song,_ he groused mentally, but without much heart behind the protest. Regardless that look had him curious now, so he pitched his voice up to speaking volume as he hit, " _Can you see what I want?_ "

And there it was: Lucifer cracked a strange, secretive smile and picked up from there. " _Can I bring you back to life? Are you still alive–?_ "

"How the actual Hell," Sam laughed, just a little deliriously, and threw his own arm around the Devil's shoulders in turn, and tried very hard not to think about the implications of the two of them strolling back to the motel belting out

_Burn, burn, burn,  
Burn your wicked garden to the ground._

 

. 

What it did get Sam thinking about was the response. Days turned into weeks, his exile came to an end, he skirted scrutiny as best he could and made time when he dared, and time after time when Lucifer came to him (God, he didn't even dare to pray Dean didn't find out, not yet) he tested out what was fast becoming a pet theory. He'd sing a line soft with eyes slanting towards Lucifer and sure enough, the angel's voice would follow if he afforded an expectant pause. Sometimes it would take him a moment, too, wherein he'd draw his brows together and absently tap the cleft of his chin as if dredging up the memory of what came next.

It was impossible, though, wasn't it? Unless he was just cheating and reading Sam's mind, but he wouldn't give a straight answer one way or the other. Yet any genre, any time period, any song Sam could think of, Lucifer followed through.

So it became a game: going more and more obscure, or trying to catch him flat-footed, or distracting him with lips and teeth and hands. He even tried for something he figured would be entirely too sappy for the likes of the Morning Star – oh how that backfired.

It wasn't just that he'd responded as always ( _I can hear your thoughts, I can see your dreams_ ), but that he'd done so breathless, indeed, amazed. Sam spent days afterward in a daze over how the archangel had looked at him for that, dumbstruck enough that Dean's temper ran short over the younger Winchester's thousand-yard stare.

He dropped the game for a time after that. If he didn't know any better he'd swear the archangel was broodier than usual. Sulking, even. Disappointed, almost certainly. Not once, though, did he change up the game by being the one to sing first to Sam.

 

. 

Time came as he learned the truth behind the Trickster, the real reason Sam found himself in the cross-hairs of its cruelty, and time came as they found a way to reconcile to some degree, but that's a story for another night. The archangels wheeled around each other with Sam as the hub, spinning one direction and then another: now Gabriel biting at Lucifer's heels, now Lucifer snapping for Gabriel's throat, changing on a dime or with strange, uneasy lulls between. If they didn't kill each other and take him and half the planet out as collateral damage they'd surely drive Sam to do it himself. Never mind that the only times he felt he truly _could_ were the moments trapped beneath or between them, when their Grace roared through him like a hurricane carried on their gusting breath, and his mind was a million miles off from such thoughts at such times.

The quieter afternoons and early mornings spent in their company made it all worthwhile: these were both respite from the subtle but surely-deadly game the angels played at and salve for the guilt that gnawed at him for what they did between the sheets and how he kept it hidden away. While he could keep Dean fooled much of the time still, though, the archangels saw right through him.

So when curiosity finally got the better of him and he tried his little call-response game with Gabriel ( _Don't knock it til' you tried it, well I tried it my friend_ ), instead of picking up the next line the angel narrowed a honey-brass gaze at Sam and let a smirk curl slow across his face.

"That doesn't work on me," Gabriel chirped in his most conspiratorial tone. No matter how Sam tried to wheedle and needle an answer out of him he'd say no more on the matter. Eventually the hunter was left with no recourse but to let it go.

It didn't stay dropped. The day it finally all made sense it wasn't Sam that started it, but Gabriel.

 

. 

Another week, another no-tell motel where the front desk attendant squinted at the Winchester boys like the words _goddamn queers_ were just on the tip of his withered tongue but two against one wasn't worth the slur. They drew such attention by sticking together and kept escalations rare in just the same way. Two young men, one beautiful, one long-haired, riding together in a muscle car and looking for just one room – what were these small-town folk _supposed_ to think?

Oh they could, you know, _not assume_ , Sam thought bitterly on more than one occasion, but in the end if the townsfolk got the wrong impression it wasn't as though they'd be there come the next month anyway so to Hell with what they thought. They would always be outsiders; he'd always be some kind of freak. It was just part of the Life: Sam accepted this before he was old enough to buy his own drinks, even if he hated it, even if it still gnawed Dean's nerves down raw.

Well. If any of them knew what goes on here some nights– nevermind it. Be it Garber or Wayzata or Fredericksburg or Fallon, it didn't really matter, did it. If his own fighting skills and arsenal weren't enough, pretty much nothing trumps a possessive archangel.

Except, perhaps, another archangel. Dean was out canvassing the town, leaving Sam to hit the books back at their room, and when Gabriel popped in (literally – he made certain there was an audible pop when he "landed" and nearly scared Sam out of his skin), the Devil wasn't far behind. Sam hadn't thought twice about re-positioning himself between the two the moment they started trading what sounded like insults in Enochian and Latin. Vulgar Latin. Not just in the sense of being colloquial but truly _vulgar_ , sniping back and forth with pot shots that would have made Catullus blush. And the poor hunter could only pull a bitchface at his laptop screen and mutter, "Knock it off."

Along with the creepy assumptions about the nature of their relationship the Winchesters' lives were rife with disappointments and false starts. That afternoon was no different. To Sam's shock, the archangels actually did pipe down – but he caught the scheming twist of Gabriel's mouth out the corner of an eye, and the way he kept glancing between Sam and Lucifer, and knew it would start right back up any second and it would only be worse.

All his years of living neck-deep in the occult and the bizarre did not prepare him for the moment Gabriel (the archangel Gabriel, the Herald of the Apocalypse, the Angel of the Annunciation, yeah  _that_ Gabriel) stared Lucifer right in the face from across the room and let loose the words: " _Just a small-town girl!_ "

Sam, unfortunately, had been mid-sip in his coffee and it ended up all over the table.

"No," Lucifer declared, folding his arms over his chest.

"Oh c'mon, you know this one," Gabriel crowed back. " _Livin' in a lonely wo-orld!_ "

"I hate you."

"You missed me. _She took the midnight train going aaanyyywheeere!_ "

Lucifer shook his head and pointedly looked away. "No, I refuse, we are not doing this."

Sam looked on, dumbstruck, caught between a total mental breakdown and hysterical laughter and unable to really act on either impulse.

It surely showed on his face because Gabriel winked before lobbing a lumpy motel pillow at the back of his brother's head.

"C'mon bro, it's happening, you know you want to." He launched into the rest of the verse, punctuated with encouragements and increasingly-agitated rebuffs from opposite sides of the room, and Sam could still only gawk as it continued to escalate until finally something broke.

The Morning Star gave his brother a look that could curdle milk as he finally stepped in to sing the prechorus ( _Strangers, waiting, up and down the boulevard–_ ), and Gabriel whooped in triumph.

Sam Winchester had officially seen it all.

Someone was laughing helplessly. He was pretty sure it was himself. Ah but there was interference to run all too soon, as Lucifer rumbled something in Enochian while standing to stride across the room and Gabriel threw his arms out as if expecting a hug – oh Sam knew better, and so did Gabe, between the Devil's leonine body language and the way the power flickered wildly. The hunter crossed the distance to intercept him in two strides.

"I liked that," he said, daring only the lightest hold on Lucifer's upper arms, rubbing up and down to soothe.

"I will not be mocked," the archangel huffed back.

Warmth soaked through the back of Sam's shirt: Gabriel was more or less hiding behind him. No shame whatsoever, that one. Fuck it. Sam let him. "It's not _mocking,_ Luci," Gabriel cut back, "I always make sure you _know_ when you're being mocked."

Lucifer narrowed his eyes again but made a disgruntled noise of defeat when Sam caught his mouth to distract with the praise of chaste kisses. Just as they often fed off each other's anger, angel and true vessel had a knack for feeding off each other's calm.

"I like it when you sing back," Sam murmured, leaning backwards a few degrees when he felt Gabe snake an arm around his waist and slot himself more fully against his body. "But seriously, when's someone gonna fill me in on what all this is about?"

The answer came from near his shoulderblade – the Devil was looking away. " _Quis demisit lapidem angularem eius, cum me lauderent simul astra matutina,"_ (Gabriel's enunciation grew pointed here over 'the morning stars'), _"et iubilarent omnes filii Dei?_ " Lucifer flinched and glared wounded doom at Gabriel right through Sam's chest but the smaller angel continued on. "Son of the Morning and Angel of Music, Sam. I'd suspected when you tried it with me.... Guess some things even the Cage can't change."

Lucifer's jaw clenched. His fingers sought out the skin of Sam's arms, his wrists, as if to ground himself, and still he said nothing.

Sam made a moue and glanced over his own shoulder at Gabriel with an eyebrow cranked up towards his hairline. "So what exactly are you saying?"

"What, you haven't figured it out yet?" Brass eyes flicked around Sam's side. If he didn't know any better he'd swear Gabriel's jackass grin grew fond. "If you sing at Lucifer he's just going to sing back."

**Author's Note:**

> SONGS CITED  
> Dierks Bentley - [Long Trip Alone](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVzkMwxn9uo) (NB: This was released in 2006 IRL but for the purposes of _I don't want to hunt down another song and/or completely rewrite the first section_ , in BH!verse it was released in 2003.)  
> Stone Temple Pilots - [Wicked Garden](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSrEQSKLJh0)  
> Lonestar - [Amazed](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR5_5l5rzok)  
> Toby Keith - [Weed with Willie](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fr4X7XEqv0)  
> Journey - [Don't Stop Believin' ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfUYuIVbFg0) which no one, NO ONE, can resist singing
> 
> The Latin verse is Job 38:6-7 – "[W]ho hath laid the corner stone thereof [of Earth], / When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody?"


End file.
